by Ted Lewis
“Oh no,” I say to him. “They’d never do a thing like that. Not to me.”
“That’s right,” Wally says, the world suddenly beginning to appear to veer back towards its proper axis.
I take a sip of my tea.
“I mean,” I say to him, “I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you what he might be running away from?”
The world tilts again.
“What?” Wally says.
“How the fuck should I know?” I tell him. “I mean, we just don’t know, do we?”
“No,” Wally says.
“And that, apart from being told fuck all about anything, is why I’m flying back to Blighty in the morning.”
Wally starts stoking himself up again.
“Hang about a minute, Jack,” he says. “I mean, what about me? What if some geezers do turn up? What happens to me? They’re not going to stop at him are they? They’re not going to say be a good boy, Wal, keep stum like a good bloke, now are they?”
I regret opening up this particular avenue in Wally’s mind.
“Well, we don’t know, do we?” I say to him. “Maybe you’re right what you said earlier. Maybe he’s full of shit.”
“Yeah, and maybe he isn’t.”
The conversation is brought to an end by the reappearance of D’Antoni. He comes into the bedroom sideways and that is because he is carrying a tubular steel poolside lounger, already opened out. Wally and I watch him put the lounger down in the middle of the room. When D’Antoni’s done that he straightens up and looks at us, then goes out again.
“What the fuck’s he playing at?” Wally says.
I look at Wally.
“Wally,” I say to him, “you ever thought of going on Mastermind?”
D’Antoni comes back again with a sheet and a couple of pillows and the jug of champagne and a glass. He dumps the sheet and the pillows on the lounger then walks round the bed to the marble cupboard and puts down the champagne and the glass and points at the remaining cup on Wally’s tray. “That mine?” he says.
“Yes, Mr. D’Antoni,” Wally says.
D’Antoni picks up the cup and takes a drink. He winces and says: “Tastes like the inside of a hustler’s mouth after a long night.”
He replaces the cup and picks up the jug and the glass and goes back to the lounger. He lowers himself down until he’s balancing his backside on the edge then he pours himself a drink and takes it all at one go. Then he pours himself another one and does the same with it that he did before. After he’s done that he pours himself another one only this time he only drinks four-fifths of it. With his free hand he juggles a packet of cigarettes and a lighter out of his shirt pocket and manages to light himself. When that’s over he looks at me and Wally, blowing smoke out at regular intervals.
“Well, this is cosy,” I say after a while.
D’Antoni just keeps looking in our direction.
“Sort of reminds me of when I was in the Scouts,” I say. “All boys together.” D’Antoni still doesn’t say anything. I light up a cigarette of my own and then I say: “Just carry on as if I’m not here, all right?”
No answer.
I smoke my cigarette and when I’ve finished I put it out in the saucer of my tea cup. Then I sit up slightly and take off my dressing gown and when I’ve done that I re-arrange the pillows and lie down in the bed. Wally stays standing where he is.
“Goodnight, Wally,” I say to him.
Wally looks down at me but he can’t manage to think of anything to say.
“It’s all right,” I say. “Don’t bother to tuck me up. I’ll be all right.”
Wally stays as he is.
“Goodnight, Wally,” I say again. “Switch the light out before you go, will you?”
This time Wally gets the message. He leans over and clicks off the wall light and then in the darkness I can hear him pick up the tray.
“What time you want calling in the morning, Jack?” he says.
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “I’ll be awake bright and early. Don’t want to miss my plane, do I?”
There is a silence from Wally’s shadow, then I hear him move off towards the door. D’Antoni says:
“You going to bed now, Wally?”
Wally stops moving.
“Well, I was, yes,” he says.
“Get one of the other loungers,” D’Antoni says. “You’re sleeping in the hall.”
“Hang about,” Wally says. “I won’t get no sleep with that bleeding fish dribbling away all night.”
“I mean up here,” D’Antoni says. “Outside the door.”
“Stroll on,” Wally says.
“Don’t be too long,” D’Antoni says.
Nothing happens for a moment, then Wally resumes his progress to the door. When he gets there he says:
“Well, why can’t I sleep in here with you two, then?”
D’Antoni doesn’t answer him.
“Jack?” says Wally.
I don’t answer him either.
Eventually Wally goes out of the room. Nothing happens for a while. Then D’Antoni says:
“You asleep?”
“Oh yes,” I tell him. “I been driving them home for hours. It’s the mountain air.”
“You’re going back tomorrow?”
“If a twenty-nine bus ran past the gate of this place I’d be on my way now.”
“And what do your bosses say when an employee of theirs refuses to fulfil the obligations of his contract?”
“Normally they’d tell him he took a dead bleedin’ liberty and then shoot off his kneecaps just so he’d remember why he didn’t get a Christmas card next Christmas.”
D’Antoni laughs.
“Yeah,” he says.
There is a short silence.
“But not in your case,” he says.
“No,” I tell him, “not in my case.”
“I kind of got that impression earlier,” D’Antoni says.
There is more drinking in the darkness and then I hear D’Antoni’s swallow as it goes all the way down, and the noise of his swallow coincides with the sounds of Wally fixing up his set of camping equipment on the landing outside.
“I could always make you stay,” D’Antoni says. “I mean, how about if I did that? I’m the one with the artillery, when all’s said and done.”
“That’s a fact,” I tell him, sliding down a little farther between the sheets.
“I could keep you here as long as I liked,” he says.
“And of course I’d just naturally let you and your toys stay together, just like last time.”
There is a creak as I hear D’Antoni get up off the camp bed and then I can hear him moving around aimlessly in the darkness, propelled by the workings of his mind.
“Jesus,” he says at last, after another long swallow, “here I am. I mean, what the Christ am I doing here? I never been out the States in my fucking life before, except to Canada one time. And here I am. In the middle of nowhere, on an island in the middle of a nowhere fucking ocean, with a couple fucking creeps who I don’t want to know, just waiting to get off this fucking place.”
I turn onto my back. My sentiments exactly, I think.
The creak occurs in reverse as D’Antoni sits down on the camp bed again. There is silence out in the hall. Wally has finished his manoeuvres. There is a sort of non-noise as I sense Wally drift into the bedroom. Then more silence.
“You all right, Jack?” Wally says eventually.
I swear to myself then I push myself upwards and find the light switch and flick it on.
“Look,” I say to Wally. “Why don’t we do the job properly? Why don’t you go and make a midnight snack and get hold of a pack of cards and we can all pretend it’s like it used to be, under canvas with the bleeding wolf cubs.”
“I was only asking,” Wally says, giving his impression of not actually being in the room.
D’Antoni gets up off the camp bed and walks between us, gargling some more champagne, lookin
g at nothing in particular.
“I should’ve known,” he says. “Those two cocksuckers. But what choice’d I have? I get off the plane and who else could I contact? They’re the only ones, and I get this. I should have got straight back on the plane, taken my chances. I sure as hell got no cover here. They can walk right on in and take all the time there is. The creep’ll probably show them to my room and ask for a tip before they splash him all over the plaster. Jesus Christ.”
I sit up in bed and lean back against the wall and fold my arms. Wally looks at me and tries to express something that is apparently on his mind but without actually saying anything. I stare back at him. Wally keeps flicking his head in D’Antoni’s direction and then back at me but as I give him no response he gives up before he breaks it. D’Antoni’s doing his own share of head shaking as well, but after a while he gets back on the lounger and pours himself some more of his drink and drinks it. I wait a while before I say anything.
“Both finished?” I ask them.
They both look at me.
“I mean,” I say to them, “you’ve jacked it in for the night? You’ve just about tired yourselves out?”
Wally just looks at me and D’Antoni doesn’t look at anybody; the champagne and orange juice is almost finished. D’Antoni takes another large guzzle and then puts down his glass and lies full length on the camp bed.
“There’s nice,” I say.
Wally stays where he is.
“Why don’t you go and get your head down as well, Wally?”
Wally looks at D’Antoni, then back at me, the way he was doing before. I take no notice of him and switch off the light and slide back down between the sheets. In the darkness there is the sound of D’Antoni’s breathing and nothing at all from Wally because he hasn’t moved a muscle, he’s still standing exactly where he was when the light went out. Fuck him, I think to myself. He can stand there all through the night as far as I’m concerned. Then there’s a slight rustling and there’s warm breath on my face because Wally’s squatting down at the bedside and he’s talking to me in a low voice.
“Listen,” he says, “Jack, you can’t clear off in the morning. I mean, you can’t leave me on me own. Supposing some bastards do turn up? I mean, like he says, they ain’t going to ask me what time the next bus leaves after they’ve knocked him off, are they?”
“Go to bed, Wal,” I tell him.
“But Jack,” he says, “I’ll be in dead lumber, won’t I? If they turn up, I’m as dead as he is.”
“How dead do you think you can get?” I ask him.
“Beg pardon?” Wally says.
“Go back to bed, Wally,” I tell him.
“But Jack—” Wally begins, but his protest is cut off by a cracking fart from D’Antoni, followed by a few mumbled words from the back of the American’s throat.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I say, but before I can lever myself up completely Wally is scuttling on his way towards the door. I lean on my elbow for a while, staring at the slightly less darker patch where the curtains are. Outside on the landing there are the sounds of Wally presumably settling down for the night. I shake my head in the darkness, but of course that will have as much effect as a duck breaking wind on the water, a futile gesture in the surrounding darkness of the mountains, an unseen release to my feelings. I stay like that for a few minutes longer, then I lower my weary bones back onto the sheets and close my eyes.
I’m just nodding off when I’m brought back to the land of the living by a voice from the landing.
“Goodnight, Jack,” Wally says. “Anything you want, you know where I am.”
Chapter Seven
IT’S RAINING, AND THERE’S this delicious smell, a smell of frying fish and damp raincoats, and this terrific sound, the splashing of chip fat and the beating of rain on Akrill’s plate glass window. I’m back in Villiers Street and I’m only third in a full house Saturday-night queue and at home there’s Man waiting with the wireless tuned to Saturday Night Music Hall. The mixed sound of the beating rain and the splashing fat gets louder and louder and the heat from the chip machine gets hotter and then I wake up and I realise that the heat from the frying chips is the breath of Wally on my face and the frying sound is the hissing noise he’s making and maybe the chattering of his teeth could account for the noise of the rain, but I couldn’t be too sure about that, not that I really care because I’m much too preoccupied with taking hold of Wally by his scrawny neck prior to putting one on him, but I don’t get round to doing that because somehow the tone in Wally’s strangulated voice makes me hold off until I listen to what he has to say.
“Jack, for fuck’s sake,” he croaks, “Listen. There’s some fucker outside. What I mean is, some fucker’s trying to get in.”
In the darkness I squeeze my eyes tight shut as an aid to concentration. And when I’ve concentrated I say to him: “Listen, you fucking chancer. All you fucking well heard was the sound of your bottle disintegrating.”
“I didn’t. I didn’t. Somebody’s outside.”
I begin to reach up for the light but Wally’s eyes, like those of a shithouse rat, have sussed out my projected action and before I know what’s happening he’s lying on top of me, gripping my wrist.
“Jack, no,” he says. “Don’t do it. They’ll see.”
I shake my wrist free and try and push Wally off the bed but he grips me like a demented leech and we both go off the bed, sheets and all, and as we cockle over the coffee tray is caught by Wally or the sheet and crashes down onto the floor. The noise is so startling that it temporarily stills our movement. We listen to the darkness. The only sound is that of D’Antoni’s breathing drifting off the camp bed.
“Listen, you cunt,” I begin, but Wally cuts me off.
“No, wait,” he says. “It’s right. I heard somebody. I mean, I couldn’t sleep out there, could I? Felt like Morden after the last train’d gone, didn’t I? So I’m just lying there on my back looking up at the darkness when I hear somebody walk up the front steps and try the sliding doors. The whole glass shuddered. So I got off my pit and went to the edge of the gallery and Christ if it doesn’t happen again. Straight up. So I come in here and tell you, don’t I?”
I lie there in the darkness and give Wally’s theory a little listen and I’m just about to tell him my views on everything when what Wally’s just said happens again. The shuddering sound drifts up into the gallery and along the landing. Wally’s in too much of a state of macaroni to tell me I told you so. I manage to unfurl the sheet off me and I scramble about and on the floor find my dressing gown and then I stand up and follow the sound of D’Antoni’s breathing. When I get to the camp-bed I carefully take the big shooter from his holster and reflect on how D’Antoni’s managed to live so long. Then I make for the lighter darkness of the door that leads onto the landing and walk along the parquet work to the gallery rail. Down in the lower reaches the fish is still dribbling away but apart from that there are no other noises. Somewhere there must be some kind of light source because a couple of pallid reflections dance slowly in the plate glass as a result of the recent shudderings; but there’s certainly not enough light to reveal any movement I might make to any observer outside so I start to puss-cat down the steps. When I get down to the hall level I wait for a moment and have another listen. Nothing. So I take another step forward and just as I do that there’s more hissing from up in the gallery. I turn and look upwards and I can just make out Wally’s vague shape craning over the rail.
“Jack,” he croaks. “They’re up here. They’re outside the bedrooms up here.”
I go back up the steps.
“You what?” I whisper.
“Up here. They’re trying the bedroom wossnames.”
“Windows?”
“Yeah, them.”
“Which one last?”
“The one next to yours, wasn’t it?”
I go back down the hall and into the bedroom next to mine. Like everywhere else, the curtains are drawn righ
t across the expanse of plate glass. The bedroom is roughly the same size and plan as my own so I walk across to the windows and stand there an inch or so away from the curtain and listen. Whoever was there isn’t there now because they’ve moved along a room and they’re trying the windows to that one and whoever it is isn’t doing the best job in the world of keeping quiet about it. Very carefully I find the gap in the curtains and slide my hand through and locate the bolts on the sliding glass and ease them out. I listen for a moment. Whoever is outside is still having a go at the other window. Even more carefully than I slid the bolts, I exert some pressure on the window and it glides noiselessly open a few inches. Cool mountain air sidles in through the crack. The sounds from outside have ceased for the moment. I slide the window open a bit more and it’s as noiseless as before. It’s now wide enough for me to step through. If I want to. The attention the other window’s been getting starts up again. Very slowly I poke my head through the gap. I can just make out a shadow shaking at the handles of the next window. There only seems to be one shadow but that’s something I can’t be sure of so I straighten up and stand there and wonder what the Christ I’m going to do about it but as it happens I don’t have to come to a decision because the sounds from the other window stop and there’s the new sound of footsteps returning to the window I’m at. I step smartly out of the gap and stand shielded by the curtain, not moving at all. The footsteps stop and there is a short surprised breath from beyond the curtains and also I notice something else, and that is that there’s not only the aroma of the assorted mountains drifting in through the gap, there’s the smell of a rather cheap perfume, cheap and nasty but nice. Then the figure that’s wearing the perfume steps through the gap and into the bedroom and all I have to do is to reach out and grip the figure’s arms behind its back and slap a hand across its mouth and while all the threshing and squirming and suppressed squealing’s going on I call out to Wally, wherever he is.
